more realistically In Latin America; and there are a good many assassinations, though happIly not many of them turn out to be permanent. The general air of the entertainment struck me as something less than satire and few of the characters Involved as really very fascinating-a surprising opinion in view of the celebrity of the people who have worked on it so long. As you probably know, Lillian Hell- man adapted the book, Leonard Bern- stein provided the mUSIC, Tyrone Guth- rie served as director, Richard Wilbur wrote the lyrics, with some assIstance here and there from Dorothy Parker and the late John Latouche, and Oliver Smith and Irene Sharaff dId the scenery and costumes, respectively, while the cast is a distinguished one, being headed by Robert Rounseville, as Candide; Barbara Cook, as Cunegonde; Max Adrian, as both Pangloss and Mar- tin; Irra Petina, as the duenna; and William Olvis, as the South American Governor. It is hard to see how so formidable a collection of talent could turn out a work only intermittently satisfac- tory, but I can form no other judgment. There are, naturally, agreeable things about the productIon. Mr. Bernstein's tunes,.--especial- ly those called "You Were Dead, You Know," "Glit- ter and Be Gay," "Eldo- rado," "The Best of All Possible V\ 1 0rlds," and "I Am Easily .LL\ssimilated"- seem to me very good in- deed, and Mr. Wilbur's accompanyìng lyrics are usually funny and appro- priate. Miss Hellman's book, though perhaps a little elfin here and there, also has its humor and, of course, the high technical competence for which she has always been noted. Because the theatre is a limited medium, CandIde gets around some- what less than he did as a literary figure. We start off, as V oltaire did, in West- phalia, and from there move to Lisbon, Paris, and Buenos Aires, and eventually back to Westphaha, where there is nothing for a man to do but tend his garden. I rather missed the visit to Eldorado, 52 HE IH ' E . "It <:f' <> ATItE,f. lt . 4 " !.. 1- .' · -- ø 1i1 ' ' I I \ ---- '- "' l' - A ,>> r1Æ 1 j t \' $ ÂF' l, ]' VOL T AIRE. TODAY V OLTAIRE'S "Candide," which turned up recently as an operetta at the Martin Beck, is as unlikely a musical operation as we are apt to see in our time. The heroine, a girl called Cunegonde, undergoes a varIety of sex- ual experiences that would certainly have surprised and delighted Catherine of Russia; the hero is one of the great imbeciles in literature and surely de- serves all the dreadful things that hap- pen to him; there are the two phIloso- phers known as Dr Pangloss and Mar- tin, who spend the evening convinced, in opposition, that this IS the best of all possible worlds and that things could 1w.rdly be worse; there is a duenna who is determIned to get her young charge into even more serIOUS trouble than she could think of for herself; there is the Governor of Buenos Aires, who seems to demonstrate that sex is approached !F çZ! '\ ..... - " t, 6; " ........... Jg; taJi , \ * 'I 1 " '\F, \)w, ': , ' , " \ ;J w , o J ..., ... . 'iiJc. "'\Aeh- ((MAJOR. BARBAR.A" T he man in the mzddle here is Charles Laughton, who is the star and dzrector of the Shaw revival at the Morosco The others begznning at the upper left and gozng around clockwzse, are Glynis Johns, Cornelia Otis Skinner, Burgess Meredith, and Elz Wallach. Mr. Shaw's comedy, whzch was written in 1905, has probably never had a more entertaining production